IT Consulting in Seattle, WA
Seattle companies bring us the projects their day-to-day IT never gets to: a file server that has to go before Windows Server 2016 support ends, a move into a new South Lake Union office, an acquisition with a second Microsoft 365 tenant, a Copilot rollout nobody has scoped. NetSys plans and runs that work remotely, with written findings and fixed prices.
The short answer
NetSys provides IT consulting to Seattle businesses: technology assessments, costed roadmaps, Microsoft 365 and Azure migrations, server retirements, network and office designs, security and compliance programs, due diligence for acquisitions and virtual CIO reviews. Engagements are priced by the project or the review, with milestones, acceptance checks and a handover. The work is delivered remotely from Brooklyn, with meetings and change windows set in Pacific time; NetSys does not send consultants on site in Seattle. A consulting project does not include a staffed help desk unless you add a managed agreement.
Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.
How IT consulting is delivered for Seattle projects
Consulting work is mostly conversation, design and careful change, and all three travel well. Discovery interviews and workshops run over Teams, scheduled in Pacific time, with screen-shared diagrams your team can mark up. Read-only access to your tenant, firewall and backup consoles gives the engineer facts instead of guesses. Each project has a written statement of work, milestones and an acceptance check, so you know what done means before anything starts. Physical tasks stay with people who are already in Seattle: your staff, your landlord's building engineer or a cabling contractor working from our specification. Cutovers are scheduled for evenings or weekends Pacific time, and every project ends with a handover in IT Glue that your staff or your next provider can use. Assessment, design and integration work is coordinated from Brooklyn, with meetings and change windows stated in Pacific time. The project has agreed milestones, acceptance checks and a handover. Ongoing monitoring and help desk require a separately defined managed scope.
Windows Server 2016 and the other deadlines on Seattle roadmaps
Microsoft ends extended support for Windows Server 2016 on January 12, 2027, and plenty of Seattle offices still run a file server, a domain controller or an old line-of-business application on it. Windows 10 support already ended on October 14, 2025, so any machine still on it is unpatched. A roadmap answers three questions for each system: retire it, move it or replace it. File shares usually move to SharePoint and OneDrive with permissions cleaned up on the way. Identity moves to Entra ID, so the domain controller can go. An application that must stay on a server goes to an Azure virtual machine or gets a supported upgrade from its vendor. Each line in the roadmap carries a cost, a date and the risk of doing nothing.
Office moves, older buildings and new towers
The building often decides the network. Pioneer Square's brick buildings, among the areas hit hardest by the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, tend to have shared risers and limited telecom space, while newer towers in South Lake Union and the Denny Triangle usually offer several carriers. A few blocks away, the Westin Building Exchange at 2001 Sixth Avenue hosts the Seattle Internet Exchange and is one of the region's main carrier hotels, which is why downtown addresses often have more circuit choices than offices in Georgetown or the Kent Valley. For a move we survey the floor plan remotely, specify the cabling, closet power and Wi-Fi layout for your contractor, order two circuits from different carriers where the building allows, and test the new network before the first employee arrives.
Copilot, AI tools and the cleanup that comes first
Seattle teams are often early adopters, and the first AI question we hear is usually about Microsoft 365 Copilot. Copilot can only show people what they already have permission to open, so a rollout starts with a permissions review: overshared SharePoint sites, Teams with external guests nobody remembers, and sensitive folders open to the whole company. Our published case study of a Copilot rollout for an 18-person organization, an engagement outside Washington, walks through that sequence. Other projects build small internal tools with Claude or connect Microsoft Graph data to the apps a team already uses. We also compare Microsoft 365 with Google Workspace when a company is deciding, pricing both on the same basis and including the migration effort in the recommendation.
Due diligence, compliance programs and a virtual CIO
When a Seattle company buys another business, we inventory the target's accounts, licenses, contracts, backups and security posture and report the risks that need a price before closing, on the deal's timetable. Compliance programs turn a rule into controls and evidence: the HIPAA Security Rule for a clinic group, NIST SP 800-171 for an aerospace supplier, or a data map for consumer health information under the My Health My Data Act, including where it sits in backups. For companies without an IT director, a virtual CIO keeps the roadmap moving: a quarterly review of projects, spending and risk, written in plain language for the owner and the board, with the engineer who wrote the plan available to carry it out.
IT Consulting in Seattle: what NetSys delivers
Assessment and roadmap
- A written assessment of every system, account, vendor and risk, produced from discovery rather than a questionnaire
- A 12-to-36-month technology roadmap with costs, sequencing and the decisions that depend on each other
Projects, designed and run
- Microsoft 365 and Azure migrations planned around identity first, with Entra ID, Conditional Access and Intune designed before data moves
- Network and office designs: Cisco Meraki or Fortinet firewalls, segmentation, Wi-Fi and failover, specified before the fit-out starts
Ongoing advisory
- Virtual CIO service: a quarterly review with leadership covering risk, spend, projects and what changed
- IT due diligence for acquisitions, leases and vendor decisions, with findings in writing
On-prem servers to Azure and OneDrive to SharePoint
Two migrations in one engagement. The client's servers lived in the office, so the business lived with the office's power, cooling and hardware age, and years of files sat in individual OneDrive accounts shared ad hoc. NetSys assessed and sized each workload and moved it into Azure with identity anchored in Entra ID, designed a SharePoint structure of sites by function and permissions by role before moving a single file, migrated the OneDrive estate into it, set backups for both platforms and took on day-to-day management. The write-up is limited to the scope delivered, with no outcome figures claimed.
IT consulting work for other clients
- Real estate
Commercial property management company
SharePoint migration of 800 GB of leases, vendor records, and property documents, with separate access permissions for 12 property teams.
SharePoint & OneDrive MigrationIT for Real Estate and Property Management
Client names are withheld. These examples were chosen for the work involved, not for where the client is, so none is presented as a Seattle client.
What IT consulting costs in Seattle
Consulting is priced by the project or by the review rather than by the hour: an assessment has a fixed price based on the size of the environment, a migration is quoted from the workload inventory, and virtual CIO advisory is a monthly figure that scales with how many reviews and decisions a year you need. What moves the number is the number of systems and sites, the compliance standard in play and whether we are also managing the environment afterwards. Every quote is written from discovery, and the terms run month to month.
Who this fits, and who it does not
Best fit: 10 to 150 employees, a decision on the table that involves cloud, an office move, an acquisition, a compliance program or a system nobody trusts, and leadership that wants options with numbers rather than a sales deck.
Read next
Industry pages: IT for Professional Services & Consulting · IT for Manufacturing
Terms used on this page: Virtual CIO (vCIO) · Microsoft Entra ID · Zero Trust
Guides: the cloud migration questions owners ask most · Google Workspace versus Microsoft 365 for a small business
Related pages
Read the full IT Consulting service page. See all locations and service areas.
Also in Seattle: Managed IT Services · IT Support · Cybersecurity
IT Consulting elsewhere: Denver · Las Vegas · Phoenix · Albuquerque · Salt Lake City · Portland
Related services: Azure Cloud Migration · Virtual CIO (vCIO) · Microsoft 365 Migration · IT Due Diligence Services
IT Consulting in Seattle: FAQs
How does IT consulting work for Seattle organizations?
Remotely, in Pacific time. Discovery interviews, design reviews and project meetings run over Teams, the engineer works from read-only access to your systems, and changes happen in agreed windows, usually evenings or weekends. NetSys does not send consultants on site in Seattle; physical work goes to your staff or a cabling contractor working from our written specification. If you want a help desk afterward, that is a separate managed agreement, staffed from 1 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific.
How is IT consulting priced in Seattle?
By the project or the review, not by an open-ended hourly meter. An assessment has a fixed price based on the size of the environment. A migration is quoted from the workload inventory: mailboxes, file shares, servers and applications. Virtual CIO advice is a monthly figure. The number of systems and sites, the compliance standard involved and how much documentation already exists move each quote. Every quote is written after discovery, and advisory terms run month to month.
How do I choose an IT consulting firm in Seattle?
Pick the firm that puts its advice in writing and will carry it out. Ask to see a sample findings report, ranked by risk with costs attached. Ask whether the engineer who writes the roadmap also runs the projects, how they stay neutral when recommending vendors, how security is built into every design, and what the handover includes. NetSys works with Seattle businesses remotely from Brooklyn, and we say so at the start so you can judge whether a remote engagement suits the project.
Can you help us choose between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace?
Yes. The answer depends on the applications your team actually uses, the security controls you need, whether you can mix license tiers and how much of your work lives in Excel, Teams or Google Docs today. We run a short trial built around three everyday tasks, price both platforms on the same basis, include the migration effort and write up a recommendation. Most Seattle firms already deep in Microsoft tools stay there, but not all, and the report shows why.
Do you offer a virtual CIO for Seattle companies without an IT director?
Yes. A virtual CIO meets with your leadership each quarter, keeps a written roadmap of projects and budget, reviews security and vendor contracts, and translates technical risk into business terms. It suits a company of 20 to 150 people that has outgrown ad hoc decisions but does not need a full-time executive. The role is advisory; implementation can be done by our engineers, your staff or another provider, and the engagement runs month to month.
Bring the decision you are stuck on.
A cloud move, a merger, a compliance deadline, a system nobody trusts. Tell us what you run and what has to change, and an engineer comes back with an assessment, options with real numbers and the order to do them in.